For Mary Gauthier, songwriting goes way beyond conveying her thoughts and emotion. It was also a lifeline when she embraced sobriety back in 1990.
In fact, songwriting’s appeal was important enough for Gauthier to swap being an acclaimed chef at a wildly successful Cajun restaurant in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood for heading to Nashville in her mid-30s to pursue her dream of becoming a professional musician.
Fast forward to the present day, and the 64-year-old singer-songwriter is touring—often with partner Jaimee Harris—including a stop at HopMonk Sebastopol on Saturday, June 17.
This year, she’s not only celebrating the 25-year-plus anniversary of her 1999 sophomore bow, Drag Queens in Limousines, but also giving love to her most recent studio effort, 2022’s Dark Enough to See the Stars. Her love of compositional craft will be on full display when she hits the stage.
“We’re going to be playing songs from all the records I made and telling stories,” Gauthier said in a recent interview. “There’ll be stories between the songs; that’s all part of this troubadour show. There’s no smoke, mirrors or flashy stuff. It’s more heartfelt human stories.”
That musical approach has garnered the southern Louisiana native numerous accolades since she released her 1997 debut, Dixie Kitchen. She was nominated for three Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards (GLAMAs), winning Best New Country Artist and also being named New/Emerging Artist of the Year by the Americana Music Association in 2005. More recently, 2018’s Rifles and Rosary Beads, a project where Gauthier co-wrote songs with U.S. veterans and their families, earned her a 2019 Best Folk Album Grammy nomination.
Heartfelt dedication and expertise are what make Dark Enough to See the Stars such a compelling listen. Recorded in a three-day burst as the world was coming out of the pandemic, these songs are steeped in the inspiration of Gauthier’s evolving relationship with Harris and personal losses. During that time, she was mourning the deaths of numerous personal friends, including John Prine, David Olney, Nanci Griffith and beloved friend and hiking buddy Betsy, all who passed in a short window of time during the Covid lockdown.
“A lot of those songs were written as an odd combo of love songs and songs about grief—they somehow go together,” Gauthier explained. “Maybe love and grief are attached in an inseparable way? I’m not sure, but it seems to work. I lost so many people I cared about in such a short time. It’s still shocking to me that I have a list of 18 people I have on speed dial, and they’re dead in two years’ time.”
She added, “The thing about death is you’re not prepared for it. You don’t think of yourself as old or older. You’re feeling good, life is going along as it always has, and there’s no way you can be emotionally prepared for it.”
Hard times have proven to be fodder for many songs Gauthier has composed. Adopted from a New Orleans orphanage, she spent her teen years surviving an alcoholic father, abusing drugs and alcohol, and navigating the deep South in the late ’60s and ’70s as a gay kid. Music always provided solace, particularly ’70s singer-songwriters like Prine and other artists from the emerging Americana movement, including Griffith, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams.
“I’ve always been interested in the singer-songwriter from the South, which is different than country music,” Gauthier explained. “I like Southerners that master language. It’s American roots music in that it’s from that place in the deep South steeped in a lot of pain that I like to call the Americana Triangle—New Orleans to Memphis to Clarksdale, MS. It’s rooted in American-type pain, which almost always has some component of race in it along with a gothic southern sensibility that’s quite Faulkneresque with some Flannery O’Connor thrown in straight away.”
That fealty to the art of musical composition led Gauthier to teach songwriting workshops and eventually publish 2021’s Saved By a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, a combination autobiography and songwriting lessons.
“I teach songwriting quite a bit and work with adults in learning the art form,” Gauthier said. “The book is a memoir, but also goes into my understanding and take on songwriting. I’m just unpacking the side of songwriting that is more of an art than a commercial enterprise. The art is intrinsically connected to some kind of healing, some kind of transcendence, some kind of alchemy. Using music and song for healing is a part of my story along with finding out it’s working really well.”
Mary Gauthier performs with Jaimee Harris at 8pm, Wednesday, June 17, at HopMonk Sebastopol, in the Abbey, 230 Petaluma Ave. More info via hopmonk.com.
